Hello,
You may have seen the call for contributions below on the list a few  
weeks ago. I am still looking for a proposal on George Lamming and his  
activities as Trade Union activist, as well as on Erna Brodber as a  
sociologist. As regards Caribbean writers, I have already received  
proposals on Wilson Harris, Earl Lovelace, Nourbese Philip, Patrick  
Chamoiseau. Other postcolonial, non-Caribbean, writers will also be  
included.
If you are interested in contributing to the volume, please get in  
touch. The deadlines will be postponed of course.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Judith

Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak
Associate Professor, English Department
Academic Coordinator of the Programs of the English-Speaking World
Office of International Relations (207)
Tel +33 4 67 14 21 03
University Paul Valery - Montpellier III
Route de Mende
34199 Montpellier Cedex 5 France
http://www.univ-montp3.fr/ri/


Another Life

Call for Contributions

‘PoCoPages’

Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée

http://www.pulm.fr


Borrowing Derek Walcott’s title for his autobiographical poem Another  
Life, this volume of the new series ‘PoCoPages’ will focus on  the  
former lives of writers before they came to writing, or the parallel  
professions they have carried on exercising while at the same time  
getting their novels, short stories, poems or plays published. Many  
writers have not always been writers, but worked first in professions  
as diversified as medecine for some, to customs officer,  
anthropologist, stage manager, engineer, or land surveyor for others.  
What alchemy took place for such a swing to be brought forth and what  
does this exactly imply? Did the author gradually drift into writing,  
or was the shift more radical a life change ? The question of whether  
such transition is — with a certain amount of hindsight — perceptible  
in the writing itself, and if it is, whether our knowledge of it,  
helps, hinders, or is of no matter whatsoever to our reading, also  
needs to be addressed. Does the former professional life of these  
authors shape their writing, or would it be more accurate to define it  
in terms of ‘haunting’ their work ? Is the new life to be seen as  
contained within the former life, or should we look at it the other  
way round ?
The themes of haunting and gestation, and those of genealogy and  
formation thus open possible vistas of exploration and interrogation.  
In the same way, the relationship between ‘the new territory’ and ‘the  
old territory’ may be examined, almost as though it were a diasporic  
bond calling upon us to ponder what the links are with the former  
being. Which is the territory that lends form and meaning to the other  
one? Can the metaphors of the home country and the host country be  
applied? In what shapes and forms do mourning and haunting appear in  
these works ? How is self-(re-)creation set up and represented in the  
writing process?
Among the postcolonial writers who will be chosen by the contributors,  
it might be interesting to examine if there is anything specifically  
postcolonial in the way territories have shifted, almost as if a new  
diaspora of the self had been created.

‘PoCoPages’ is a new peer-reviewed series within the new collection  
Horizons anglophones published by the Presses universitaires de la  
Méditerranée (Pulm). It is a transformation of ‘Les Carnets du  
Cerpac’, which it will replace. Though the term Poco may stir up in  
the reader’s mind images of some American country rock band, or again  
various possession rituals associated with Africa or the Caribbean,  
the reference here however is to the abbreviation of postcolonial. The  
term in its diversity is meant to reflect the interest of ‘PoCoPages’  
for postcolonial, diasporic cultures and literatures, steeped in  
métissage and crossed borders.

General Editor : Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak.

The first volume in the series, India and the Diasporic Imagination is  
forthcoming (Spring 2011). The volume Another Life is to be published  
in 2012. It will be the result of a collaboration between  
"EMMA" (Etudes Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone) at Université  
Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, and "Centre Interlangues TIL" (Texte,  
Image, Langage) at Université de Bourgogne.

Please submit a 500-word abstract with a short bio by January 31, 2011  
to Dr Mélanie Joseph-Vilain <[log in to unmask]> and  
to Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak <[log in to unmask]>. If  
the preliminary proposal is accepted, final essays (5,000 words) will  
be due by March 31, 2011.